Design: Mark Owens

LACE BENEFIT ART AUCTION 2009

May 20, 2009 / LIVE AUCTION
May 21, 2009 / SILENT AUCTION

For this year’s Benefit Art Auction, we have invited a select group of artists, curators, and creative professionals to each organize their personal “visual playlist”.  The resulting array of mini-exhibitions will reflect the multitude of styles and interests that make Los Angeles’ contemporary art world such an exciting place to be.  Find out who selected what....


PARTICIPATING CURATORS
Nayland Blake, Phil Chang, Anne Collier, Stuart Comer, Fallen Fruit, Carlee Fernandez, Eve Fowler & Lucas Michael/ACP, Soo Kim, John Knuth, Jenée Misraje, Shamim Momin, Terri Phillips, Lucas Reiner, Marco Rios, Aaron Rose, Sterling Ruby, Maya Schindler, Anna Sew Hoy, Thomas Solomon, Carol Stakenas, George Stoll, Catherine Taft, Ed & Deanna Templeton, Matt Wardell and Amy & Wendy Yao. 

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Kathryn Andrews, Carmen Argote, Skip Arnold, Joshua Aster, Dave Bailey, Steven Bankhead, Michael G. Bauer, Walead Beshty & Karl Haendel, Josh Balckwell, Nayland Blake, Dain Blodorn, Lauren Bon, Aaron Brewer, Sky Burchard, Jeff Cain, Javier Carrillo, Kevin Christy, Jennifer Cohen, Anne Collier, Sarah Conaway, Heather Cook, Mario Correa, Meg Cranston, Sarah Cromarty, Greg Dalton, Tomory Dodge, Peter Downsbrough, Zackary Drucker, Angela Dufresne, Shannon Ebner, Bart Exposito, Fallen Fruit, Robert Fontenot, Francesca Gabbiani, Matt Greene, Mark Hagen, Skylar Haskard, Carlson Hatton, Julian Hoeber, Dennis Hollingsworth, Pearl Hsiung, Marie Jager, Kiki Johnson, Mariah Johnson, Nina Katchadourian, Mike Kelley, Alex Klein, Jeff Kopp, Mirjam Kort, Erin Lee, Kristi Lippire, Maggie Lowe Tennesen, Shana Lutker, Ashley Macomber, Patrick Marcoux, Michael Markowsky, Christopher Michlig, John Millei, Mike Mills, Joey Morris, Fred Mortagne, Carter Mull, Bret Nicely, Chris Oatey, Silke Otto Knapp, Arthur Ou, John Parot, John Pearson, phranc, David Ratcliff, Terry Richardon, Marco Rios, Jacob Robichaux, Jennifer Rochlin,         
Steve Roden, Carissa Rodriguez, Alexis Ross, Christopher Russell, Maya Shindler, Melanie Schiff, Katy Schimert, Anna Sew Hoy, Kirsten Stoltmann, Claude Stracensky-Collins, Kim Stringfellow, Sumi Ink Club
(Sarah Anderson& Luke Fischbeck) , Ami Tallman, Kara Tanaka, Henry Taylor, Ed & Deanna Templeton, Ashley Thayer, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, The LA Urban Rangers, Caroline Thomas, Kristine Thompson, Yanai Toister, Allen Tombello, Josh Tonsfeldt, Tyler Vlahovich, Erika Vogt, Matt Wardell, James Welling, Morgan Wells, John Williams, Jason Yates, Amy Yao, and Liat Yossifo and more.

View images of past Auctions.

Download the LACE Benefit Art Auction invitation.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Subject-Object Proof no.2 (2008).

STREET ADDRESS
MY BLOODY VALENTINE

From the silly to the sublime, this 24/7 storefront installation offers Hollywood Boulevard passersby new video work ranging from the roughly hewn to the pristinely polished. My Bloody Valentine explores the poetics of love, lust, sex, music, blood, guts and terror. Darin Klein, curator.

Artists: Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Kelly Sears, Trulee Grace Hall, Nathan Budde, Cindy Rehm, Dino Dinco, Weston Currie, Cathy Begien, Zachary Drucker, Rhys Ernst, Adrian Cruz, Kanako Wynkoop, Anjali Prasertong, and Mores McWreath.

Lucky Dragons, Stacks and Layers.

LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) and VOLUME are pleased to present Resonant Forms April 3 through 5, 2009. This three day festival showcases new voices in the emergent fields of experimental electronic music, live cinema and sound art. While artists have been working at the crossroads of visual and sound arts for decades, recently this work has experienced a resurgence as technological developments have allowed greater fluidity across artistic media and genres.

Resonant Forms will premiere Sheepwoman, a new live cinema performance piece by SUE-C. and Laetitia Sonami, that is inspired by Haruki Murakami's two novels "Dance, Dance, Dance" and "The Wild Sheep Chase". The artists bring the film into existence by manipulating photographs, objects, drawings, videos, shadow theater and miniature lighting rigs. Sheepwoman interweaves dreams with reality to engage the audience in witnessing the creation and dissolution of fleeting fantasies, blurring the boundaries of the cinema world and the real world. This work was commissioned by LACE with funds from The Multi-Arts Production Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

View the Sheepwoman trailer here.

The festival will also feature performances by William Basinski, Richard Chartier, Christopher Willits, Kadet Kuhne, Lucky Dragons, Yann Novak, and Celer, installations by David Kwan, Mark Trayle, and artSpa, hosted by Adam Overton. Each of these artists traverses the territory between visual art, music, and sound through varied disciplines including sound manipulation, soundtrack generation, digital media, computer-generated visuals, aural landscapes, and animation.

Participating in the same cultural conversation as the Mutek festival (Montreal), Transmediale (Berlin), and Ars Electronica (Linz), Resonant Forms is also designed to cultivate a deeper understanding and appreciation of this work through panel discussions and workshops, where dialogue between composer and audience is encouraged. Buy a festival pass and experience all three days of over ten performances and workshops, your choice of one Sheepwoman performance, and panel discussions.

RESONANT FORMS FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

Friday April 3
7:00pm Panel discussion with William Basinski, Kadet Kuhne, Mark Trayle, and David Kwan *
8:30pm SUE-C. and Laetitia Sonami Sheepwoman [premiere]

Saturday April 4
1:30pm Workshop with Christopher Willits
4:30pm Celer
5:15pm Kadet Kuhne
6:00pm Christopher Willits
6:45pm Lucky Dragons
7:30pm SUE-C. and Laetitia Sonami Sheepwoman

Sunday April 5
4:00pm Sheepwoman [matinee]
5:00pm Yann Novak
5:45pm Richard Chartier
6:30pm Untitled 3 with William Basinski + Richard Chartier
7:00pm William Basinski + James Elaine

throughout Sunday
artSpa with composer/masseur Adam Overton [free & open to the public] **
featuring composer/performers Ezra Buchla, David Kendall, and Gerhard Schultz.
Hosted by the Paul G. Gleason Theatre next door.

RSVP @ a@plus1plus1plus.org to participate in artSpa's Massage Workshop on Thursday April 2, 6-10PM.
Explore some basic, but highly effective massage and touch techniques with the trainings of Adam Overton.

RESONANT FORMS TICKETS

Festival Pass (includes one performance of Sheepwoman
$45 general / $35 members

Day Pass (does not include Sheepwoman)
$20 general / $15 members

Sheepwoman single performance ***
$15 general / $10 members

* Free with admission to a Sheepwoman single performance of your choice.
** artSpa is free and open to the public.
*** Capacity for Sheepwoman is limited, advanced tickets are strongly encouraged.

ABOUT SHEEPWOMAN

Sheepwoman is a new live film by SUE-C. and Laetitia Sonami, inspired by Haruki Murakami's two novels Dance, Dance, Dance and The Wild Sheep Chase. The two artists bring the film into existence by manipulating photographs, objects, drawings, videos, shadow theatre and miniature lighting rigs. Sheepwoman interweaves dreams with reality. It engages the audience in witnessing the creation and dissolution of fleeting fantasies, blurring the boundaries of the cinema world and the real world.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

	William Basinski is an American composer, clarinetist, saxophonist, and sound & video artist. A classically trained clarinetist, he studied jazz saxophone and composition at North Texas State University in the late 70’s. In 1978, inspired by minimalists such as Steve Reich and Brian Eno, he began developing his own vocabulary using tape loops and old reel to reel tape decks. He developed his meditative, melancholy style experimenting with short looped melodies played against themselves creating feedback loops. His first release was Shortwavemusic. Although created in 1983, it was first released on vinyl in a small edition in 1998 by Carsten Nicolai's Raster-Noton label. Throughout the 1980s, Basinski created a vast archive of experimental works using tape loop and delay systems, found sounds and shortwave radio static. In the 1990s he performed and produced records and intimate underground shows there for various New York artists including Antony, Diamanda Galás, Rasputina, The Murmurs, and his own ad-hoc experimental electronic/improv band, Life On Mars. Check out a LA Times article on his curatorial work here.
	Celer is the stage name of husband and wife couple Will Thomas Long and Dani Baquet-Long. In Will and Dani's time together, they have produced numerous custom, handmade self-releases, sound for installations and art exhibitions, as well as creating works for independent labels in North America, Japan, and Europe. They produce works of art that reflect the nature of love, family, and their concerns and interests, through a relative and absolute symposium of expression. They currently reside on the coast of Southern California. Check out her work here.
	Richard Chartier, sound/installation artist and graphic designer, has created critically acclaimed recordings for labels such as 12k/LINE, Raster-Noton, Die Stadt, Spekk (Japan), NonVisualObjects, Mutek_rec, and Trente Oiseaux, His digital minimalist work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening. He has collaborated with noted artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, COH, and Asmus Tietchens. Chartier's sound works and sound installations have been presented internationally including the ICC (Tokyo, Japan), I Moderni at Castello di Rivoli (Torino, Italy), 2002 Whitney Biennial (NY), and the Art Institute of Chicago. Check out his music here.
	James Elaine is an artist, filmmaker, and curator living in Los Angeles. His films have been shown in festivals, museums and galleries around the world. Installations and films made in collaboration with composer William Basinski have been presented internationally. Their film, Variations, premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Elaine is currently the Hammer Projects Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and was the recipient of the 2008 Ordway Prize. Check out a LA Times article on his curatorial work here.
	Kadet Kuhne is a media artist whose work includes video, installation and music composition. Kadet's films and installations involve a combination of sensors, virtual space, and single or multiple channels, with the goal of causing dual states of tension and equanimity in a suspension of time. As an award-winning filmmaker she has numerous shorts that have screened worldwide including her film Infinite Delay, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Kadet's compositions twist signal processing and neurological impulses into electronic ambiences that aim to make your cilia vibrate in curious patterns. Trained in jazz guitar in her youth, Kadet became attached to the instinctive nature of improvisation which led her to CalArts where she studied Composition and Integrated Media. Select exhibitions and performances include the Museum of Art Lucerne, LACMA, Musees de Strasbourg, REDCAT, Museum of Contemporary Art LA, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, The LAB, The Weisman Art Museum, Highways Performance Gallery, CEAIT Festival and the New York Underground Film Festival. Check out her work here.
	David Kwan is a sound and video artist who creates interdisciplinary works for exhibitions, installation and performance. He retools environmental and sensory phenomena into nascent and generative systems, wherein gradual transformative processes are set into motion and their resultant forms emerge over time. By reframing our surroundings and magnifying aspects of perception, he hopes to engage experiential aspects of listening and seeing, which is at the heart of his artistic endeavors. Kwan has presented work at the Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Kala Art Institute, Headlands Center for the Arts, Artist Television Access, The Lab, and Mission 17 in San Francisco; Jack Straw New Media Gallery in Seattle; Akademie Schloss Solitude and Baracke am Deustchen Theater in Germany. He holds a BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College, where he also taught in art, music and intermedia. Read a review of his Emergence exhibition at Mission 17 (San Francisco) here.
	Lucky Dragons means any recorded or performed or installed or packaged or shared or suggested or imagined pieces made by Luke Fischbeck, Sarah Rara, and/or any sometimes collaborators who claim the name. Lucky Dragons are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures--equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, building up fragile networks held together by such light things as skin contact, unfamiliar language, temporary logic, the spirit of celebration, and things that work but you don't know why. There have been hundreds of these simple yet shifting and unpredictable instances--with audiences ranging from the intense intimacy of one person to the public spectacle of thousands of people. At the heart of it all is playing together--building up social collectivities, re-engaging the wonder and impossibility of technological presence. Recent performances include: the 2008 Whitney Biennial, NY's PS1, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Institute for Contemporary Art, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle, Los Angeles' The Smell, NY's The Kitchen, The Smithsonian Institute's Hirshorn Museum, Cooper Union, and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Check out their music here.
	Yann Novak is a sound artist, composer, designer and the creative director of Dragon's Eye Recordings. His compositions have been published by Dragon's Eye Recordings (US) and Infrequency (CA). He has performed at prestigious events and venues in the Pacific Northwest, including The Decibel Festival, and the Henry Art Gallery, among others. Internationally, he has performed at Mutek Festival (Montreal, QB), Blim (Vancouver, BC) and Legends (Manchester, UK). The versatile range of his work is also demonstrated by collaborations with visual artist Alex Schweder and with choreographer Crispin Spaeth. Through these collaborations, Novak’s work has been featured at The American Academy in Rome (Rome, Italy), the TBA Festival (Portland, OR), Western Bridge (Seattle, WA), Howard House (Seattle, WA), and Suyama Space (Seattle, WA). Check out his work here.
	Adam Overton is a living composer and performer of experimental music and action, a teacher of performance & multimedia, and a certified massage therapist based in Los Angeles. Through experiments in rhythm, presence, and contact, his work plumbs the depths and abilities of the bodymindperson, and playfully maps the intimate distance between individuals. A fascination with the practices and challenges of awareness, acknowledgment, and [co]existence are currently fueling many of his investigations. Recent projects and performances have included participation in the ridiculously massive, one-day happening, A Machine Project Field Guide to LACMA (LACMA, Nov 2008); performances of new work by Mark So, Michael Pisaro, Christian Kesten, Francesco Gagliardi, G. Douglas Barrett and others (the wulf. & human ear, Sept-Nov 2008); participation in Elana Mann's election-based performance project, Exchange Rate: 2008 (Oct & Nov 2008); two days and one night of moonshot meditation, lunar warlock ritual, and spring tide syzygetics at artSpa Resort & artSpa atNight (Sea and Space Explorations, July 2008); and the 2nd annual Valentine's Day workshop, Feel the Love 2008 (Machine Project, Feb 2008). He has also presented his work at festivals and venues around Los Angeles, the U.S., and in Beijing, Bergen, Berlin, and London. Check out his website here.
	SUE.C is a visual and performing artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her works challenge the norms of photography, video, and technology by blending them all into an organic and improvisational live performance setting. Employing a variety of digital tools to create an experimental animation "instrument," Slagle synthesizes cinema from photographs, drawings, watercolors, hand-made papers, fabrics and miniature interactive lighting effects. Dark, moody, textural, and physical, her live films inherit equally from the kinetic languages of Stan Brakhage's abstract cinema and Nicolas Schöffer's lumodynamic scuptures. She employs the same techniques in her recorded work to emphasize the beauty of the banal street corner, public parking lot, forgotten winter beach, torn remnant of a found photograph, cast-away super 8 vacation footage, and other half-forgotten, often-unnoticed, in-between spaces in her surroundings. Slagle has collaborated with musicians such as Morton Subotnick, Luc Ferrari, Antye Greie (AGF) and Joshua Kit Clayton at a variety of international venues including the San Francisco International Film Festival, REDCAT (Los Angeles), Ars Electronica (Linz), MUTEK (Montreal), SONAR (Barcelona), MonkeyTown (NYC), and Activating the Medium (San Francisco). Her solo performances combine live imagery with a live soundtrack using her own voice, small sound effects devices and assorted electronic instruments. She currently teaches "Math & Media" at the California College of Arts (CCA) in Oakland. Check out her website here.
	Laetitia Sonami combines text, music and found sounds from the world, in compositions that have been described as "performance novels". Her signature instrument, the Lady's Glove, tracks the slightest motion of her fingers, hand and arms: through its use, Sonami can create performances where those tiny movements shape the music and environment. Her sound installations combine audio and kinetic elements embedded in ubiquitous objects such as light bulbs, rubber gloves, bags, and more recently toilet plungers ("Sounds of War"). Sonami has been performing in numerous festivals across the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and China, among which the Arts Electronica Festival in Linz, the Bourges Music Festival in France, the Sonambiente Festival in Berlin, the Interlink festival in Japan, Ban-on-a-Can, the Kitchen and Other Minds, S.F. Awards include the Alpert Award in the Arts (2002), Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Award (2000), the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (2000), and a Creative Work Fund award (2000) for a collaboration with Nick Bertoni and the Tinkers Workshop ("BAGS"). Check out her website here.
	Mark Trayle works in a variety of media including live electronic music, installations, improvisation and compositions for wireless chamber ensembles. He uses re-engineered consumer products and cultural artifacts as interfaces for electronic music performances and networked media installations. In recent pieces for chamber ensembles he places performers in an interactive network where composers, performers and technology cooperate to form the music. Trayle has performed and exhibited at experimental music and new media venues and festivals in the U.S., Canada and Europe, including New Langton Arts (San Francisco, 1985 and 1989), LACE (Los Angeles, 1989), Experimental Intermedia Foundation and The Kitchen (New York City, 1988 and 1989), Het Apollohuis (Eindhoven, Netherlands, 1993), the Centro d'Arte (Padova, Italy, 1995), Metrònom (Barcelona, 2000) and Mex (Dortmund, 2001). He is currently Co-Chair of the composition program at the California Institute of the Arts. View his work here.
	Christopher Willits has been instrumental in redefining the guitar in the digital age. Using custom-built software, Willits morphs his guitar playing into warm folded rhythms of texture and melody. Named “the center cell of a complex indie rock-avant-garde-electronic art Venn diagram in the Bay Area” (San Francisco Bay Guardian), and “The Picasso of Sound” (Tokafi Magazine), Willits defies genre distinctions while still defining a sound of his own. His guitar lines fold and weave into each other creating complex patterns of interlocking rhythm, melody, and texture. Willits completed his Master's Degree in Electronic Music at Mills College where he studied with Pauline Oliveros and Fred Frith. Willits recent collaborators include Scott Pagano, Taylor Deupree, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Willits' numerous releases and collaborative projects cover a broad spectrum of musical styles, and include one main commonality: Willits' unique approach to the guitar and sound. Please visit his website here.

ABOUT VOLUME

VOLUME functions as a catalyst for interdisciplinary new media work through exhibitions, performances, events, lectures, and publications. Concentrating on the nexus of music and visual arts practices ranging from the avant-garde to popular culture, VOLUME offers unique opportunities for artists to create and present hybrid works.

Since 2007, Volume has organized performances, lectures, and exhibitions by emerging and established artists working at the crossroads of sound, music, and visual arts practices including Carsten Nicolai, William Basinski, Frank Bretschneider, Matmos, Christopher Willits, Richard Chartier, Taylor Deupree, Sawako, ISIS, Tim Hecker, and Jeff Cain.
Visit Volume here.

For more information on Resonant Forms Festival, download the press release here.

Sheepwoman is made possible by The Multi-Arts Production Fund a, program of Creative Capital supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Resonant Forms is funded in part through Meet The Composer's MetLife Creative Connections program.

Image: Mark Boulos, All that is Solid Melts into Air (2008)

IN CONVERSATION WITH MARK BOULOS
In collaboration with Pitzer Art Galleries

Presentation: Saturday, February 21, 2009, 11a.m.- 1p.m.
FREE to the public.

Join us for a presentation and conversation with Mark Boulos, whose video installation All that is Solid Melts into Air is currently featured in Narrowcast: Reframing Global Video 1986/2008.

Light brunch will be served.

 
    
"Dance Class" with Sir Heffington.

LUST 4 LACE: MY BLOODY VALENTINE
LACE'S Annual Valentine's Day Bash

$10 General Admission/ $5 Members.
Complimentary parking for the first 70 people who purchase a ticket!

LACE celebrates another Valentine's Day with its notorious annual fundraising event, Lust 4 LACE! Join us on Friday the 13th at 8PM for an appropriately ghoulish bash among friends and lovers in Lust 4 LACE: My Bloody Valentine.

Shoghig Halajian, Franco Castilla, and Robert Crouch of the LACE team have organized an evening to celebrate the grand tradition of years past. Let loose with a performance and participatory “Dance Class” by Sir Heffington, a video screening curated by Darin Klein, curator of the current exhibition Christopher Russell at the Hammer Museum, videos by Kelly Sears, Trulee Grace Hall, Nathan Budde, Cindy Rehm, Dino Dinco, Weston Currie, Cathy Begien, Zachary Drucker, Rhys Ernst, Adrian Cruz, Kanako Wynkoop, Anjali Prasertong, Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Mores McWreath, DJ sets by Alejandro Cohen (Dublab), Total Freedom (Wildness) and Maki (KXLU), a zine table, and more! Costumes are highly encouraged.

Schedule of Events
8pm- Video screening curated by Darin Klein
9pm- DJ set by Alejandro Cohen (of Dublab)
9:45pm- Performance and "Dance Class" by Sir Heffington.
10:30pm- DJ set by Total Freedom (of Wildness)
11:15pm - DJ set by Maki (of KXLU)
* KOGI BBQ will be parked out front and serving food all night.
Find out more about KOGI BBQ on LAWeekly and CBS.

Past years’ events have featured Jordan Biren, Dino Dinco, Zachary Drucker, Martin Durazo, Micol Hebron, Tyler Hubby, Bryan Jackson, Kadet Kuhne, Lauren Lavitt, Eva Posey, Dustin Robertson, Margie Schnibbe, Mark Cosmo Segurson, Vena Virago, Austin Young, Carlos Zamora, and more.

All proceeds benefit LACE programs.
For more information on the artists, download the press release and invite.

Kelly Sears, The Joy of Sex (2003); Sir Heffington and the Fingered Dancers(2008).

EVERYDAY URBANISM
In collaboration with LAForum

Book Signing & Panel Discussion: Thursday, January 22, 2009, 7:30-9:00 p.m.

LACE is pleased to host the editors of Everyday Urbanism Margaret Crawford, John Kaliski, and John Chase for a book signing and launch party for the new revised edition, with a panel discussion moderated by Patricia Morton.

Everyday Urbanism is a broad multidimensional consideration of the city, based on the primary role of everyday life in shaping the fabric of shape and time that constitutes urban life. For Everyday Urbanists lived experience can be more important than physical form in defining the city.

For more information, visit LA Forum.
Sponsored by the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design and LACE.

SUPERFICIAL SUPERGLOW: CHANNELING THE STARS
featuring "Openings" by Andrea Boeck, Jihyun Kim, Justin Lui

Opening reception: October 15, 6-8 p.m.
Presentation and discussion: November 13, 7p.m.

Researching the condensation of multiple technologies into building enclosures, student work explores the possibility of storefronts that watch you, respond to you, and allow you to interact with them. Using the storefront of LACE gallery and the stars in the Hollywood Boulevard “Walk of Fame,” this installation re-thinks the new urban and technological setting to provoke interaction and capture motion and internet data through a full scale illuminated, plastic prototype. The November 13 event features a presentation of all three Superficial Superglow prototypes. 
  
Funding is made possible by the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture Arts Forum grant, a UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design Charles Moore Traveling Fellowship, the UCLA Department of Design I Media Arts, the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing and cityLAB.

Design: Ivan Golinko

LA25 HALF-LIFE
Curated by Thomas Solomon

Opening reception: 15 October, 6-8 p.m.

This exhibition features new work from LA25, a group of 25 emerging Los Angeles artists selected for inclusion in an innovative project presented by the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. LA25 was born out of a unique vision to support the area’s arts community while also celebrating Skadden’s 25 years in Los Angeles. Over the course of three years, LA25 has presented the work of artists who, at the time of selection, had not had previous commercial gallery representation. The artists were selected by a jury of art professionals from some of the most renowned art schools in the Los Angeles area: Art Center College of Design, CalArts, Claremont Graduate University, Otis College of Art and Design, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside and USC. Thomas Solomon, curator.

The LA25 artists are Marya Alford, Patterson Beckwith, Lindsay Brant, Cal Crawford, Marie Jager,
Andres Janacua, Matthew Jordan, Vishal Jugdeo, Annie Lapin, Elad Lassry, Christopher Michlig,
Yaniro Paramo, José Álvaro Perdices, Ephraim Puusemp, Marco Rios, Jeff Sheng, Natalie Shriver, John Sisley, Jim Skuldt, Carly Steward, Whitney Stolich, Lee Thompson, Greg Wilken, Rosha Yaghmai and Brenna Youngblood.

Download Press Release.

"HOLLYWOULD"
Presented by Freewaves

Freewaves will present its 11th festival of new media art along Hollywood Blvd. in the heart of Hollywood, California for five days and nights.

Freewaves, a global arts organization, will showcase 160 experimental videos, films and media art from around the world on the Freewaves web site and on the iconic Walk of Fame from Thursday, October 9 through Monday, October 13, 2008.  The festival will transform the world-famous boulevard into a massive, multi-faceted screening room.  Selected works will be activated by live events, displayed on LCD screens inside stores and installed in storefront windows.  Special events, screenings, and site-specific happenings will take place at various venues such as LACE, American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre, the Roosevelt Hotel, the Musicians Institute, and the Knitting Factory as well as portals connected to the festival’s unique web-based content. 

"Hollywould," the theme for this year’s festival, is a playful and evocative turn both as an international symbol of the American entertainment industry and as a Los Angeles neighborhood very much in flux. By placing Hollywood in the conditional tense, Freewaves’ Director Anne Bray invited artists to imagine what could be, while exploring the role of art in mass-media-saturated culture and the future of gentrifying neighborhoods. The theme also represents a homecoming of sorts for Freewaves, as the festival’s offices are again located in the LACE building on Hollywood Boulevard.

Download Press Release.

Brian Bress

AGAINST THE GRAIN
Curated by Christopher Russell

LACE is pleased to present Against the Grain, curated by Los Angeles-based artist Christopher Russell, as part of LACE's thirtieth anniversary celebration.  Russell looks back on a seminal exhibition from LACE's history, Against Nature: A Group Show of Work by Homosexual Men (1988), curated by Dennis Cooper and Richard Hawkins.

Cooper and Hawkins' original show looked at decadent seclusion and syphilitic deterioration as modes of social rebellion and was informed by J.K. Huysmans' novel À Rebours. This exhibition exposed the margins of the already marginalized world of gay men. The curators translated Huysmans through the lens of AIDS in a politically and socially conservative era, and displayed rich, decadent and inherently morbid work. They reacted against aesthetics that seemed polemically overwrought, privileging activism over the individual.

Now, Russell looks at the influence of this lineage. Beyond the Fin de Siecle, beyond AIDS activism, he asks after the influence of radicality among a new generation of artists. Using Against Nature as a point of departure, Russell has selected 14 local artists that seek a similar critical position in our social climate today -- Tom Allen, Brian Bress, Robert Fontenot, Wendell Gladstone, Matt Greene, Julian Hoeber, Brian Kennon, John Knuth, Amy Sarkisian, Ryan Taber, Ami Tallman, Kelly Sears, Anna Sew Hoy and Cheyenne Weaver. These artists undertake themes of decadence within a present day context. 

There has been a lot of talk around the gothic and the decadent in contemporary art. However much of the current generation exploring these ideas has not made the historical connections that seem common among artists of the 1980's. This show attempts to draw a tighter line between varied approaches to the gothic and the decadent, pointing out recent, local connections but also establishing a lineage: Huysman's novel, A Rebours, translates not just to Against Nature, but also to Against the Grain.

Full color catalog available ($25). LACE members receive a 10% discount.

This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of The Pasadena Art Alliance and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.  Additional support for LACE and its programs comes from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, The Getty Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Jockey Hollow Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Morris Family Foundation, Stone Brewing Co., and the members of LACE.

Download Press Release.

LP4 “The Paisley Underground”
led by Alejandro Cohen and curated by Josh Kun

Tickets: Gen $5/Members Free; call 323.957.1777

A jingle-jangle excavation of a lost 80s moment in LA music led by Alejandro Cohen, a member of the band Languis and a "labrat" with Dublab.com.

LACE Listening Parties are interactive public conversations curated by Josh Kun are inspired by the current explosion of mp3 players, podcasts and other mobile media, that are used to score the soundtrack of everyday life. Each Party will feature special guest critics, musicians and curators who will share favorite recordings - from popular anthems to found sounds and new material - to serve as the impetus for this series of wide-ranging discussions about urban space and music. Party hosts will design her/his listening experience to shape how the music is encountered and to break down a traditional panel format.

Josh Kun (PhD, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley) is an Associate Professor in the Annenberg School of Communication and affiliated faculty with the Program in American Studies and Ethnicity. Prior to joining the USC Annenberg school, Josh Kun was Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (UC Press) which won a 2006 American Book Award. His articles on popular music, the pop cultures of the US-Mexico border, and the music of Los Angeles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and anthologies. He is director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's The Norman Lear Center.

RECENT LPs with Karen Tongson, RJ Smith and Rafa Saavedra.

LACE 10K
Second Annual Art Walk

Show your support for LACE and join us on Saturday, September 13th for the LACE 10K!

The 10K is a fundraising art walk that will take you on an insider's tour of the museums and galleries that have helped bring LA to the forefront of the international art world. Explore with us the dozens of art spaces throughout Chinatown and the downtown arts district, featuring:

- Exclusive access to 1804 Industrial Street, LACE’s legendary downtown location, with studio tours of the current residents and a viewing of the Richard Hawkins mural.
- Free admission and a special walkthrough of the Marlene Dumas exhibition at MOCA.
- A private reception at Bank gallery with artist Dorit Cypis, who will lead us on an exclusive walkthrough of her show before it opens to the public.

As a 10K walker you will raise money for LACE by getting sponsorships in the form of new members. Each walker who raises the minimum of $50 in memberships will receive a complimentary LACE membership. Raise even more money and get even higher levels of membership! Each walker will also receive an official LACE 10K 2008 T-shirt.

By participating in the art walk, you ensure that our programs continue to flourish. Your dedication enables us to further our commitment to contemporary art, to provide a safe haven for artists to push boundaries, expand the definition of contemporary art practices, and engage the Los Angeles community.

For more information, please call 323-957-1777.

In-kind support provided by Izze, Mountain Valley Water, and Sencha.

LACE would also like to thank the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bank, Jail, Sam Lee Gallery, The Box, Telic Arts Exchange, and Bert Green Fine Art for their support.

Mark tribe
Port Huron Project 4: We Are Also Responsible
Based on a speech originally given on May 2, 1971 by César Chávez
South Lawn, Exposition Park, Downtown Los Angeles
Free and Open to the public

Creative Time and LACE will present Mark Tribe’s Port Huron Project 4: We Are Also Responsible, the fourth in a series of reenactments that draw upon the traditions of political demonstration, protest, and public address by restaging speeches from the New Left movements of the 1960s and 70s. This public performance features an impromptu speech delivered by César Chávez at Exposition Park on May 2, 1971.

The two remaining reenactments will take place in Oakland in August and New York City in September. This project is commissioned by Creative Time as a part of its public art initiative Democracy in America:  The National Campaign.  Inspired by artists, this series offers them platforms for addressing the shifting nature of democracy in this country.  For further information, please visit www.creativetime.org

Re: PRESENT ~ LACE ANNUAL BENEFIT ART AUCTION
A celebration of the moment
Representing three decades of excellence with a toast to the future!

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join us for on Thursday, May 22, 2008 to celebrate our 30th anniversary.

With Ann Magnuson as our MC, Re:PRESENT, LACE’s Annual Benefit Art Auction, featured both silent and live auctions and special entertainment to link LACE’s historical foundations with the exciting new cultural production abounding in our city right now. This annual signature event offered patrons the opportunity to purchase 100+ original artworks by some of the most important established and emerging artists working today.

THE ARTISTS:
Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Edgar Arceneaux, Kevin Appel, John Baldessari, Uta Barth, Sue de Beer, Joe Biel, Sanford Biggers, Tomory Dodge, Mari Eastman, Bart Exposito, Kim Fisher, Mark Flores, Francesca Gabbiani, Paul Gellman, Drew Heitzler, Jim Isermann, Alice Konitz, Sherrie Levine, Miranda Lichtenstein, Martin Margiela, Barry McGee, Michele O’Marah, Carter Mull, Renee Petropoulos, Danica Phelps, Yuval Pudik, Amanda Ross-Ho, Malgorzata Romanska, Christopher Russell, George Stoll, Joe Sola, Linda Vallejo, Robert Walker, James Welling, Goody-B Wiseman, Eve Wood, Christopher Wool, Bruce Yonemoto, Andrea Zittel/Smock Shop (list in formation)

Since 1978, LACE has had a simple mandate – to enrich the cultural landscape of Los Angeles and contribute to global culture. In the last thirty years LACE has commissioned and presented the works of over 5,000 artists and has worked with artistic pioneers such as Laurie Anderson, Chris Burden, Mike Kelley, Suzanne Lacy and Bruce and Norman Yonemoto. We have become a force in the community and remain committed to championing the role of the artist as an agent for positive change. All Re: PRESENT proceeds ensure that we continue to deliver a safe haven that allows for both emergent and established artists to push boundaries, expand the definition of contemporary art practices and inspire the public imagination.

Photo credit: Sari Roden

ALLAN KAPROW 18 HAPPENINGS IN 6 PARTS

LACE was proud to present a re-invention of Allan Kaprow’s seminal Happening –18 Happenings in 6 Parts – originally presented in 1959 at the Reuben Gallery in New York. The original work featured a cast of performers including Allan Kaprow, with Rosalyn Montague, Shirley Prendergast, Lucas Samaras, Janet Weinberger, Robert Whitman, Sam Francis, Red Grooms, Dick Higgins, George Segal, and others.

To re-invent this work in 2008, LACE invited artist Steve Roden to assemble a creative team, which includes Rae Shao-Lan Blum, Michael Ned Holte and Stephanie Smith. The team is joined by performers Simone Forti, Steve Irvin, Flora Wiegmann with Elonda Billera and Skylar Haskard creating key props and installations. Special guests will join the performance each night including Roy Dowell, Renee Petropoulos, Justin Lowman, Elizabeth Leister, Fran Siegel, Brad Eberhard, Mark Dutcher, Doug Harvey, Steve DeGroodt, David McDonald, and Martin Kersels.

This new vision of the work is grounded in the team’s intensive research and dialogue, based on Kaprow’s original notes and writings.  “I’d like to be sure that Kaprow’s intentions and ideas surrounding the work are not lost in attempts to replicate a historical moment.” (Steve Roden)

Photo credit: Sari Roden

Allan Kaprow 18 Happenings in 6 Parts was timed to coincide withthe exhibition Allan Kaprow—Art as Life, on view at the Geffen Contemporary at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA through June 30, 2008, and organized by the Haus der Kunst Munich, and  the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. The curatorial concept for this exhibition was developed in close collaboration with the recently deceased artist, and curators Stephanie Rosenthal (Munich) and Eva Meyer-Hermann (Eindhoven).

One aspect of this large-scale retrospective is the re-invention of many of Kaprow’s Happenings, which will take place at 29 local institutions throughout Southern California. Thanks to a generous grant from the Getty Foundation, MOCA has invited Los Angeles-area art schools, academic institutions, arts organizations, museums, and artist-run spaces to reinvent a diverse selection of Kaprow’s Happenings.

Happenings are coordinated by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and made possible by generous support from the Getty Foundation. Allan Kaprow—Art as Life is organized by the Haus der Kunst, Munich, and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Concept of the exhibition by Stephanie Rosenthal and Eva Meyer-Hermann. For a complete listing of all Happenings, visit www.moca.org/kaprow

Special thanks to the Allan Kaprow Estate, Hauser & Wirth Zürich London, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California (980063).

Image: Wendy Mason and Mindy Rose Schwartz, 2008

overlooker
collaboration by Wendy Mason and Mindy Rose Schwartz

Opening Reception February 26 6 - 8pm followed by a
Video Screening curated by ART OFFICE and Slab
Screening time 8 - 9pm

Wendy Mason and Mindy Rose Schwartz explore their mutual interest in
how objects and spaces hold the history of human interactions and the
physical and ephemeral traces of their use.

Using macramé as an intervention device, Schwartz will un earth
objects found within LACE and LACE'S archive, binding a hybrid of
forms to the architecture. Mason will show a video of a plywood
octagon that colors the air in a room while also being unhinged from
the physicality of its location. Both works acknowledge the unseen as
integral to fully understanding a place as a whole.

Together their work, as the title suggests, points to a fullness that
occurs inside of a space that extends beyond the structure of what is
meant to contain it. The natural organization of objects and meaning
is changed when what is normally hidden is revealed.

Artist's websites:
www.wendymason.org
www.mindyroseschwartz.com

overlooker is part of Street Address, an ongoing storefront series at LACE
that offers a 24/7 art experience to Hollywood Boulevard passersby.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Download Press Release

REALITY TESTING
organized by ART OFFICE and Slab

*This one night only screening will take place in conjunction with the opening reception of the overlooker exhibition at LACE. The opening reception for overlooker starts 6pm. ART OFFICE and Slab will present Reality Testing 8pm.

ART OFFICE and Slab, two artist-run collaborative projects join together to present a 60-minute screening of contemporary video work by local, national, and international artists. The videos in this program explore how realities are tested through representation, physical configuration, creative desire, and potential failures.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Julia Brown
Kim Collmer
Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby
Lyn Elliot
Peter Harkawik
Jon Irving
Lauren Kelley
Jennifer Levonian
TV Moore
Shana Moulton
Corinna Schnitt


ABOUT ART OFFICE
As an ongoing platform for critical investigations and artistic projects, ART OFFICE for Film + Video actively seeks, promotes and presents contemporary video and film in art contexts. Founded by artists and CalArts alums Victoria Fu, Julie Orser and Jennifer L. Porter, ART OFFICE was formed to expand both emerging and established artists working in time-based media in the Los Angeles area.
http://www.artoffice.org/

ABOUT SLAB
Slab is an exhibition method founded by Los Angles-based artist Wendy Mason and Houston-based curator Nancy Zastudil. Enacted in unexpected locations, Slab functions as a platform for artists' works, including solo, group and collaborative projects. We consider the transitory roles of artists and curators while aiming to facilitate artist's projects and events, exploring the fun and experimental nature of creative activity.
http://www.slabprojects.com

LEARNING FROM THE BILBAO GUGGENHEIM
(Center for Basque Studies Conference Papers) University of Nevada, Reno, 2005.
Anna Maria Guasch and Joseba Zulaika, editors.

INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE AND AFTER (SoCCAS series vol. II)
JRP|Ringier, 2006, John C. Welchman, editor.

A BOOK LAUNCH AND PANEL DISCUSSION

Introductions by:
John Welchman, University of California, San Diego, Chair SoCCAS [Southern California Consortium of Art Schools]
Joseba Zulaika, Director, Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno

Followed by a panel discussion with:
Andrea Fraser, UCLA, Artist and author of Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser (MIT, 2005)
Anna Maria Guasch, University of Barcelona, Author of El Arte Ultimo del Siglo XX: Del Postminimalism a lo Multicultural (2003)
Serge Guilbaut, University of British Columbia, Author of How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art (Chicago, 1983)
Allan Sekula, Cal Arts, Artist and author of Photography Against the Grain (NSCAD, 1979)

Learning from the Bilbao Guggenheim
Hailed as an "Instant landmark," Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim brought a new sense of relevance to architecture in the transformation of urban landscapes. Gehry's optimistic artichoke set amid Bilbao's postindustrial ruins has become an icon of what architecture can do for a city decline. As a result, every city has dreamed of its own Guggenheim. Eleven years have already passed since the momentous apparition and the time seems ripe to reflect critically on the influence of the Guggenheim on the world of art, architecture, museums, and urban renewal. What can we learn from the Guggenheim effect?
Contributors: Beatriz Colomina, Lucy Lippard, Ery Camera, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Allan Sekula, Anna Maria Guasch, John C Welchman, Joseba Zulaika, Andrea Fraser, Jon Azua, Javier Viar, Hans Haacke, Muntadas, Dean MacCannell, Keith Moxey.

Institutional Critique and After
The anthology explores the history and contemporary reassessment of Institutional Critique, launched (but not yet so-named) in the late 1960s by artists including Marcel Broodthaers and Daniel Buren in Europe and Michael Asher and Hans Haacke in the US. In the aftermath of a movement that commenced nearly four decades ago, how have its leading concepts, assumptions, and tactics developed, especially as many of them can no longer be considered as radical or adversarial as they might have been in the late 1960s? Have the demographics and cultural politics of the museum and gallery sectors also shifted in the last few decades, in response—or otherwise—to Institutional Critique itself? Have the locations (pre-eminently museums and exhibition spaces) that were once the objects of critique emerged in more recent generations as objects of desire, or even fetishism?
Contributors: John Searle, Hans Haacke, Alexander Alberro, Maria Eichhorn, Andrea Fraser, Isabelle Graw, Martin Sastre, Renee Green, Ricardo Dominguez, Lynn Zelevansky, Monica Bonvicini, Christiane Paul, The Guerilla Girls, Juli Carson, Javier Tellez, Astrid Mania, Amy Pederson, The Yes Men, Lauri Firstenberg, Jens Hoffmann, Mike Kelley, John C. Welchman and Ricardo Dominguez.

Special thanks to SoCCAS and the Woodbury University for Community Research and Design for their help in hosting this event.

DETROIT with RJ SMITH, April 1, 2008
A LACE Listening PartY

Pondered: What is the fate of a great American city?
What’s new to say about Motown?
How does one achieve membership card in the Midnight Funk Association?
What does muskrat really taste like?
These questions and more answered.

For the Listening Party on April 1, RJ Smith expertly led a wander through Detroit's musical (and political) history. Smith is the author of The Great Black Way: LA in the 1940s and the Lost African American Renaissance and is a Senior Editor at Los Angeles Magazine. He is currently writing a biography of James Brown.

SUBURBS with KAREN TONGSON, MARCH 4, 2008
A LACE Listening PartY

Karen Tongson is an English and Gender Studies professor at USC.  She is currently at work on a book title RELOCATIONS about race and sexuality in the southern California suburbs (for NYU Press).  The project’s scraps can be found on Inland Emperor .  She is also a co-founder (with Christine Balance and Alexandra Vazquez) of the popblog Oh! Industry.

Listening Parties are interactive public conversations curated by Josh Kun are inspired by the current explosion of mp3 players, podcasts and other mobile media, that are used to score the soundtrack of everyday life. Each Party will feature special guest critics, musicians and curators who will share favorite recordings - from popular anthems to found sounds and new material - to serve as the impetus for this series of wide-ranging discussions about urban space and music. Party hosts will design her/his listening experience to shape how the music is encountered and to break down a traditional panel format.

Josh Kun (PhD, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley) is an Associate Professor in the Annenberg School of Communication and affiliated faculty with the Program in American Studies and Ethnicity. Prior to joining the USC Annenberg school, Josh Kun was Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (UC Press) which won a 2006 American Book Award. His articles on popular music, the pop cultures of the US-Mexico border, and the music of Los Angeles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and anthologies. He is director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's The Norman Lear Center.

Brenton Maart, Factory Crossword, 2008

On the Risk of Others
The Photosyntax of Brenton Maart
Curated by Ultra-red

In recent years Ultra-red has joined with community groups in multiple cities in the U.S. and Canada to explore strategies for collective organizing around the AIDS epidemic. They have held these events in art museums, galleries and art schools in order to investigate the potential role such institutions may play in local efforts to address the crisis. LACE has hosted Ultra-red on a number of occasions in its development of these projects and in doing so has participated actively in our investigations. The collaboration between LACE and Ultra-red on this exhibition of works by Brenton Maart marks a significant step in this institutional analysis.

Brenton Maart, a South African gay man of mixed racial heritage, was born and raised when the Apartheid regime was in power. Consequently, he is intimately acquainted with how state regulation of race and sexuality shapes intimate emotional, psychological and physical experiences. In the post-Apartheid era he and other artists of his and earlier generations, such as Bernie Searle, Anton Kannemeyer, Zanele Muholi, Conrad Botes, Diane Victor, and Nicholas Hlobo, have begun investigating the desires, hopes, histories and practices that define the contemporary sphere of sexuality in South Africa. This work inventories the ideological practices that shape how South Africans imagine and re-imagine themselves. While the trajectories they follow may be particular to South Africa, they are nevertheless resonant with comparable efforts in the United States.

Acknowledgement: Maart’s artwork, Factory Crossword, was commissioned for Make Art/Stop AIDS, an exhibition of HIV/AIDS related art work from the United States, South Africa, Brazil and India. The exhibition, scheduled to travel to venues in each of the participating countries, is having its first showing at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles (February 23 – June 15, 2008). Concerned that Maart's work would present a barrier to the attendance of school groups to the exhibition—a target audience—the Fowler was hopeful it might be presented elsewhere in Los Angeles. Fortunately, LACE offered to show the piece, along with other works by Brenton Maart. The Fowler has generously sponsored this exhibition by providing financial and logistical support.

Related Public Programs

Thursday, February 28, 7 - 9 pm
PNP:  Party n Plays
AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) presents an evening of theater on gay men and substance use. Whether the substance is love and friendship, meth or pot, we invite the greater Los Angeles communities to join in an evening of fine artistic work and substantive discussion on the perils and pleasures inherent in the volatile mix of masculinity, lust and drugs.  Featuring staged readings of excerpts from:  Circuitry by Andrew Barrett; Porridge by Brian Bauman; A Writer & His History by Ricardo A. Bracho; Meth’ed to Madness by Anthony Breen; I Am Derek Jackson by Derek Jackson; (e)vaporate. by Christopher Oscar Pena; and INHALE/EXHALE by Robert Sanchez.  Dramaturgy and Direction by Ricardo A. Bracho. Produced by Patrick “Pato” Hebert, Associate Director of Education, APLA. Free and open to all publics.

Saturday, March 1, 2 – 6pm followed by a reception
THE EPIDEMIC IS STILL BEGINNING:
Sexuality, Representation and HIV Prevention Justice

A public forum organized by Ultra-red and CHAMP on the occasion of South African photographer, Brenton Maart's exhibition On the Risk of Others at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions).

Presented in cooperation with the exhibition MAKE ART / STOP AIDS at the UCLA Fowler Museum.

SESSION ONE: INSITITUTIONS AT RISK (Cultural Institutions and the AIDS Crisis)
2:00pm to 3:45pm

Panelists: Marla Berns, Director, Fowler Museum, UCLA
Carol Stakenas, Director, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
Alexandra Juhasz, Professor of Media Studies, Pitzer College
Simon Leung, Associate Professor of Studio Art, UC Riverside

Moderator: Robert Sember, Ultra-red

The Marxists philosopher Louis Althusser has suggested that the ideology of the dominant class is manifest in the practices of civic institutions, including museums, galleries, schools and non-governmental service organizations. Struggles for financial security, status and audience are among the ways in which these institutions engage with systems of power and measure success—they usually depend on State, philanthropic organizations and wealthy individuals for money; adhere to standards established by the market or an elite group of critics and scholars; and, serve the interests of core patrons. While these mechanisms help determine institutional practices, they also provide points for critical engagement. The discussion, Institutions at Risk, will examine these ideological systems in light of the AIDS epidemic and other crises. It is often at points of crisis that institutional mechanisms are most emphatically enforced and are thus momentarily visible. The discussion will focus on how art institutions and art professionals define and practice their "civic mandates." The panelists will have an opportunity to reflect on how they negotiate their various roles as curators, administrators, teachers, artists and activists within institutional contexts and to discuss with audience members examples of contemporary and historic exhibitions, and art works events and practices that illustrate how institutions function at moments of risk.

BREAK: 3:45pm to 4:15pm

SESSION TWO: ACTS OF SOLIDARITY (Prevention Justice and the Administration of Crisis)
4:15pm to 6:00pm

Panelists: Darrell Cummings, Gay and Lesbian Center
Rosemary Candelario, Department of World Arts and Cultures, UCLA
Gina Lamb, REACH
Richard Hamilton, CHAMP
Robert Sember, Ultra-red

Moderator: Walt Senterfitt, CHAMP

The dominant public health approach to HIV-prevention in the United States emphasizes behavior change and individual responsibility. The terms of analysis used to support this approach consist of clearly defined risk groups (men-who-have-sex-with-men, injecting drug users, commercial sex workers) and discrete risk practices (unprotected anal and vaginal sex, needle sharing). The resulting interventions do little to connect the members of these risk groups to the political and economic contexts in which they live. Most activist and community-based groups, however, have emphasized how structural or social factors produce individual and collective vulnerability to HIV-infection. These factors include income disparities, discrimination, prejudice and lack of access to prevention information and technologies. As the epidemic grows and the limits of dominant public health models become clear, increasing numbers of public health workers are focusing on factors that define risk contexts and conditions such as poverty, gender oppression and religious fundamentalism. Advocates of this approach have called for a social justice-based approach to HIV-prevention and strengthening the lines of solidarity that connect HIV activism to a variety of other social movements, including immigrant rights, the women's movement, environmental activism and anti-globalization movements. A core practice of these coalitions is the analysis of institutions and the roles they play in facilitating or frustrating the expansion of social justice causes. Art institutions and practices were once key venues for critique, learning and organizing. In the discussion, Acts of Solidarity, we will examine the key principles of the prevention justice movement and what may follow from engagements between it and members of the art world.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Download Press Release

Cosmo Segurson (video still), 2008

BUMP:
Recent and Rarely Seen Explicit Videos from Southern California Artists
debuted at Lust 4 LACE

This bold collection of explicit videos explores issues of the perverse and provocative, challenging many preconceptions about sexuality and desire. Whether focusing on intimacy, the sex act itself or a sense of playfulness - these unabashed explorations of the human condition transcend gender and go beyond the purely pornographic. As a whole, the explicit nature of these works is more about stripping away layers of convention, rather than just clothing.

Featuring brand new and rarely seen explicit videos and performances from Southern California artists including: Buck Angel, Skip Arnold, Jordan Biren, Squeaky Blonde, David Burns, Peter Caine, Franco Castilla, Mark B. Chamness, Charong Chow, Jennifer Cohen, Geoff Cordner, Michael Dee, Dino Dinco, Willia Drew, Zachary Drucker, Martin Durazo, Micol Hebron, Tyler Hubby, Bryan Jackson, Kadet Kuhne, Darin Klein, Lauren Lavitt, Matt Lipps, Selene Luna, Ming-Yuen S. Ma, Eon McKai, Julie Orser, Julianna (JP) Parr, Kathryne Layne Paxton, Barry Pett, Eva Posey, Dustin Robertson, Margie Schnibbe, Mark Cosmo Segurson, Thairin Smothers, Vena Virago, Austin Young, Carlos Zamora, and more.

Organized by David Burns and Margie Schnibbe, BUMP was inspired by a series of explicit video programs organized by Bruce Yonemoto in the early 1980’s.

Photo credit: Margie Schnibbe

LACE'S INFAMOUS VALENTINE'S DAY PARTY IS BACK!

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions celebrated the grand tradition of VALENTINE's day from years past with, good friends, random lovers, and strangers and to kick off our 30th anniversary in style!

Organized by artists David Burns and Margie Schnibbe (aka Vena Virago) with Peter Bolton & Carla Hart, Franco Castilla, Lenora Claire, Chad Clark, Robert Crouch, Christine Nichols and Carol Stakenas, Lust 4 LACE celebrates the grand tradition of years past and all manner of delightful debauchery by creating a night featuring explicit, naked, juicy, tasty, slippery, slimy, crunchy, gooey, sexy, voyeuristic, fetishistic live action animated narrative squishy hand-made video, live art and musical performance--DJ sets by John Tejada, Henry Self and Robert Crouch--not to mention kinky crafts with JP Craft Captain sponsored by Babeland and delectable libations by Stone Brewing Co.

Featuring brand new and rarely seen explicit videos and performances from Southern California artists including: Buck Angel, Skip Arnold, Jordan Biren, Squeaky Blonde, David Burns, Peter Caine, Franco Castilla, Mark B. Chamness, Charong Chow, Jennifer Cohen, Geoff Cordner, Michael Dee, Dino Dinco, Willia Drew, Zachary Drucker, Martin Durazo, Micol Hebron, Tyler Hubby, Bryan Jackson, Kadet Kuhne, Darin Klein, Lauren Lavitt, Matt Lipps, Selene Luna, Ming-Yuen S. Ma, Eon McKai, Julie Orser, Julianna (JP) Parr, Kathryne Layne Paxton, Barry Pett, Eva Posey, Dustin Robertson, Margie Schnibbe, Mark Cosmo Segurson, Thairin Smothers, Vena Virago, Austin Young, Carlos Zamora, and more.

Photo credits: (l - r) Lynda Burdick, Margie Schnibbe, Lynda Burdick

LUST 4 LACE part of the LACE LIVE! commissioning series. Throughout 2008 LACE is developing projects to celebrate LACE’s rich history, inspire heightened usage of its archival holdings, promote exploration of contemporary art in Los Angeles since 1978.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Be our MYSPACE valentine!!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Download Press Release here.

Photo: Camilo Ontiveros and Felipe Zuniga, 2008

EL CUBO (Cube)
Collective project by Camilo Ontiveros and Felipe Zuniga

Cube explores notions of social architecture through a transportable sound sculpture
whose sound track responds to site-specific locations.

Cube is a transformable object that articulates experiences in its interior and its exterior.  Cube exist thanks to the conjunctional initiative of different creators with the goal of provoking the irruption of different sonorous gradients, incessant voices, emiferal chronics and ambiental episodes in the city .

Unstable, Cube unfolds and loses its defined limits only to replicate the extreme growth from the surroundings to which it tries to echo. Constructed of wastes, signs of the consumption economy, Cube is a kamikaze version of its neutral and white predecessor.

Cube unfolds its aesthetic potential in concrete spaces as much as imaginary; it is drop-down architecture, a sonorous intervention in the noise of the city, a specific-social cartography that projects to the public, between the public, towards the public.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Listen to LARADIOCUBO

El Cubo is part of Street Address, an ongoing storefront series at LACE
that offers a 24/7 art experience to Hollywood Boulevard passersby.

Christine Nichols, Maynard Monrow and Linda Taalman join Hit + Run for LACE LIVE! DIY T-shirts.
Photos: Joshua White

LACE LIVE! DIY T-shirts with Hit+Run

LACE kicked off the year at ART LA 2008 with a special 30th anniversary celebration! HIT+RUN was invited to explore LACE's archives and select imagery to reflect their long history of supporting experimental art. HIT+RUN is proud to celebrate this vital Los Angeles art institution, and we invite you to a live screenprinting session this Saturday, January 26th in Santa Monica. Each person got to choose from exclusive designs, featuring moments in LACE history with Mike Kelley, Dorit Cypis, Tony Oursler, Frederick Fisher, Highland Art Agents and HIT+RUN, to create their own FREE commemorative LACE T-shirt! Organized by Christine Nichols, Special Projects Director.

DIY T-shirts is the first LACE LIVE! commission. Throughout 2008 LACE is developing projects to celebrate LACE’s rich history, inspire heightened usage of its archival holdings, promote exploration of contemporary art in Los Angeles since 1978.

Hit + Run at art la 2008. Photo: Franco Castilla

Amy Casillas and Vincent Ruiz Abogado walk for LACE

LACE 10K
The first LACE 10K, a sponsored art walk, took place on Saturday, September 29. A dedicated band of LACE 10K Walkers hit the pavement and raised $6,000 for LACE programs and explore the art community in Los Angeles together.

LACE 10K Walkers proved that there is more to see in L.A. than what is in your rear view mirror  by walking 6.5 miles and exploring more than 40 local art galleries along the route.  There was lunch and a few surprises along the way, not to mention plenty of art.  The walk concluded with a finish line party at LACE (6522 Hollywood Blvd) beginning at 5pm.

Each Walker was required to sign up 10 sponsors.  The cost to sponsor is $50 and each sponsor received a membership to LACE with benefits including advance notice of exhibitions & special events, free admission to the galleries & free/reduced admission to special programs. 

By participating in the LACE 10K, you help build the foundation on which to achieve the next three decades of challenging and unique programming at LACE. To become a LACE 10K Walker for 2008 simply open the attached packet, fill out the participation form and return it to LACE by fax 323.957.9025 or email:  administration@artleak.org. Click here for the LACE 10K packet.

LACE 10K was conceived and produced by Vincent Ruiz-Abogado with support from fellow LACE Board members, Chad Clark, Grace Kim and David Richards.

The Black Sea Files, Ursula Biemann. Photo: Nicholas Brown

JUST SPACE(S)
Opening reception: Wednesday 26 September 7 - 9 p.m.

From our neighborhoods and parks, to our prisons, pipelines and national borders, physical space is defined by social constructions.  With such recent events as Hurricane Katrina, controversy over immigration reform and the realized effects of global warming, it is more than evident that many of these spaces are failing their inhabitants. In this exhibition and programming series, artists, scholars and activists reveal how these spaces function, and where they stop short– making way for thought and action to create justice in societies and spaces.

Just Space(s) aims not merely to show what is unjust about our world, but to inspire visitors to consider what the active production of just space(s) might entail. It asks a crucial question: How do we move from injustice to justice at the level of the body, the home, the street corner, the city, the region, the network, the supranational trade agreement and every space within, between, and beyond?

Through the lens of conceptual and physical landscapes, the artists and activists of Just Space(s) explore themes of prison reform, immigration and labor, economic inequality, environmentalism, race, and indigenous rights.

Furthermore, this exhibition will blur the distinction between art, education, and activism. A library/infoshop and symposia and event series extend the scope and scale of the main exhibition. By transforming LACE, in part, into an active learning environment, Just Space(s) seek to provide visitors with tools to consider alternatives to the current social and political discourses that dominate and constrain our conceptions of space and justice.

For more information and programming schedule visit: www.justspaces.org

Click here for the press release.

Ashley Hunt (map detail)

AN ATLAS
Opening reception: Wednesday 26 September 7 - 9 p.m.

An Atlas is a traveling exhibition of artists working with “radical cartography”—a practice that uses maps and mapping to promote social change. The 10 participating artists, architects, and collectives take on issues from globalization to garbage and explore the map’s role as a political agent. The exhibition and accompanying catalog contribute to a growing cultural movement that cuts across boundaries of art, cartography, geography, and activism.  It is a companion exhibition to the publication, “An Atlas of Radical Cartography," (upcoming Fall 2007, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, Los Angeles.) 

Works include Ashley Hunt’s intricate diagram of the social effects of the global prison-industrial complex; the Center for Urban Pedagogy’s mapping of the people who make and manage the “garbage machine” in New York City; Jane Tsong’s drawing of how nature and culture clash in Los Angeles’ watershed; and Trevor Paglen and John Emerson’s route map of CIA rendition flights.

AN ATLAS CONTRIBUTORS

An Atlas is made possible in part by a grant from the LEF Foundation, and is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts. For more information, please visit www.an-atlas.com

Click here for the press release.

Out Side In
On view: 29 August - 9 September 2007

OUT SIDE IN is an exhibition of artwork by 2007 MFA graduates from the University of California, Irvine, presented at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). The aesthetic and intellectual interests of this group are varied and expressed using video, photography, painting, drawing, installation, sculpture and performance. The navigation of sites and space is considered in works addressing the militarized landscape, Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion map of the earth, sites of historical trauma, and the everchanging neighborhood where LACE is located. Other artists explore the body and interpersonal relationships. Figures pose in lushly constructed paper rooms, a woman interacts with images of deceased artists, and animated bodies engage with each other in intimate and awkward ways. Others use criticality and humor to expose Dr. Condoleezza Rice, stereotypes of Japanese femininity, and the vagaries of political speech.

The exhibition's title alludes to the various positions and dynamics at play in political, philosophical, geographic, bodily, and emotional states of being. It refers to a fluidity of perspective and the artists' multiple attempts to upset the familiar and re-route its meaning through skillful and thoughtful manipulations of their chosen media. With equal doses of wit, analysis, poetry, and attention to craft, the work in this exhibition exemplifies the diverse influences of the institution where these artists met.

The artists featured are Dan Bayles, Douglas Green, Anna Kim, Lara Odell, Gina Osterloh, Jeff Sheng, Kristine Thompson, Lisa Tucker (collaborating with Matthew Bryant and Cheryl Gilge), Gordon Winiemko, and Chie Yamayoshi. A limited-edition publication will accompany the exhibition.

Click here for the press release.

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Lucci and Remedios, the Squirrel Cub on the Karaoke Ice tour
Watts Tower Art Center. Photo: Nancy Nowacek

Karaoke Ice
Designed by Nancy Nowacek, Katie Salen and Marina Zurkow

This public art project, an ice cream truck-turned-mobile-karaoke-unit, was deployed throughout Los Angeles to unite people in a collective quest to perform and record new versions of pop songs using the vernacular of ice cream truck music. Karaoke Ice introduced people to the playful ways in which technology can be used to give voice to personal and collective concerns, as well as enable meaningful social interaction between groups, both large and small.

Click here for the press release.

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The Tour
Breaking out from its LACE Hollywood headquarters, the Karaoke Ice tour will visit an array of distinct neighborhoods across Los Angeles. Lucci and Remedios will make daytime and evening appearances at a variety of public spaces that encourage social gathering. Come and join the tour and rediscover Los Angeles through Karaoke! Click here for a more detailed schedule.